Space for Transparency This blog by Transparency International provides an independent and informed viewpoint on corruption. It gives a space to start a worldwide conversation on possible solutions to overcome corruption, and on governance, transparency and accountability.

Towards a new and more transparent culture of spending EU funds?

Intransparency of EU funds spending is not only bad for democratic governance and public participation and control, but transparency is also crucial for the fight against corruption as the President of the Budget Control Committee, Luigi de Magistris, underlined this morning in the European Parliament.

The US government website that allows anyone interested to track public spending of the recovery measures made available by the Obama government seemed to be a good example on how to make things better than they are currently in the EU.

During the discussion, MEPs like Ingeborg Grässle, Zigmantas Balcytis or Jorgo Chatzimarkakis intervened in line with the Transparency International position, very critical of the present EU system and also attacked Karina Mathernova, Deputy Director General for Development, Coordination and Communication of Cohesion Policy in the European Commission, for not doing enough. MEP Martin Ehrenhauser has already blogged about this on his blog.

In return, the Commission representative played the ball towards the EU Council and the member states (especially the old EU members) who were reluctant to agree to more transparency and would put forward data protection and business secrets as reasons not to make EU funds spending more transparent. But she promised that with the reform of the Structural Funds (for the next period from 2014) this would be brought up. However, she didn’t seem convinced that member states would follow along that path.

The answer given by MEPs was very simple: It is no human right to get money from the EU, so being transparent about how this public money is spent should be a basic principle. In line with the guests from the US, everybody seemed to agree that the public has the right to know!

Ronny

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Space for Transparency

This blog by Transparency International provides an independent and informed viewpoint on corruption. It gives a space to start a worldwide conversation on possible solutions to overcome corruption, and on governance, transparency and accountability.